"A book that celebrates the dogcentricity of our language and culture ought to be as charming, funny and irresistible as dogs are. And 'You're My Dawg, Dog' is."— John Berendt, best-selling author of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil"

(PRWEB) February 26, 2013

“You’re My Dawg, Dog: A Lexicon of Dog Terms for People” written by award-winning author Donald Friedman and illustrated by New York Times Op-Ed creator and designer, J.C. Suarès, one can find 146 dog terms, idioms, proverbs and metaphors explained for people, with the help of over 64 delightfully illustrated dogs. On a single page dog lovers and logophiles will find quotes from Shakespeare, Rihanna, pre-Socratic philosophers, Black Sabbath and the NASDAQ.

“You’re My Dawg, Dog” gives us enlightening etymologies and vivid examples of familiar phrases like “dog days”, “dogfight”, “dogfish”, and the “dog collar” worn by clergymen. Colorful dog terms are defined, like “black dog” which was Churchill’s nickname for his bouts of depression, “tough dog to keep on the porch”— Hillary’s descriptive for Bill, and “doggie style”, which the author drily explains is not “Vogue for Airedales and Cocker Spaniels.”

Below Donald Friedman picks 13 favorite dog terms from his book. Pick up “You’re My Dawg, Dog” for these and 133 more funny and fascinating definitions.

1. Hot dog (n) A precooked sausage, a frankfurter or wiener, usually served on a bun and de rigueur cuisine at a baseball game. From the early accusation that dog was the primary constituent of the emulsified meat that is stuffed in the casing. 2. (adj) Someone who performs daredevil stunts or shows off. “Herb, ever the hot dog at chess, loved to offer his queen in sacrifice.” Sometimes used pejoratively to describe a self-aggrandizing or non-team player. 3. An exclamation of pleasure; also “hot diggity dog” With the exception of Pat Boone and maybe Sarah Palin, last known public use was in 1958.

2. Dogfight (n) A no-holds-barred brawl. “When Herb found Josiah with his fiancée Sally at the party, it turned into a scene out of Amores Perros—the two of them on the floor, Herb biting Josiah’s ear like he was Mike Tyson.” 2. One-on-one aerial combat. Two famous dogfighting aces from World War I were Eddie Rickenbacker and Baron Manfred von Richthofen. Battles with the latter were famously parodied by Charles Schulz with the legendary Snoopy fighting from the roof of his Sopwith Camel doghouse.

3. Dog-eared (adj) Turned down or bent over, especially the corners of pages. “Sally gave Herb her copy of Ulysses and, given that he’d never seen her read anything more challenging than Cosmo, he was dumbstruck when he opened it and found it dog-eared, underlined, and filled with her marginalia.” 2. Worn out, shabby from overuse. “We’ve been listening to the same dog-eared rhetoric from the same dog-eared senator for forty years now.”

4. Black dog depression (n) The phrase seems to conjoin a dark mood with being dogged or unshakably followed. Commonly associated with Winston Churchill, who often referred to the depressive side of his bipolar disorder as his “black dog.” The usage has been around for centuries: in the Middle Ages, melancholia was one of the less positive traits the dog represented. “When Sally told Josiah she couldn’t face the day, that she’d gotten up with a black dog in her bed, he asked whether it was better or worse than his daily awakening with an elephant’s foot on his chest.”

5. Horn dog (n) Someone who thinks about sex all the time and may, as a consequence, become a “tough dog to keep on the porch.”

6. Dog collar (n) A stiff upright collar, especially the reverse collar worn by a clergyman. “Herb could not come to grips with his unfrocking, and for a year afterward continued to wear his dog collar and bask in the deference it inspired in the people he met.”

7. Big dog (n) The boss, an important personage, or the most competitive in a field. 2. The constellation Canis Major. 3. The Boston Dynamics Big Dog robot, which looks and sounds like a giant mutated insect, can carry several hundred pounds for hours over any kind of terrain without losing its balance even when violently kicked from the side or traversing black ice, and without complaint. See it on YouTube.

8. Dog days (n) For the Greeks, the rising of Sirius, the dog star, signaled the start of the hot and weakening days of summer, which became known as the dog days. The Greeks offered sacrifices to Sirius to cajole cool breezes. The Romans called the wiltingly hot days “dies caniculares.” The French call the scorching August weather “la canicule.” This idea—as well as “every dog has its day”—is alluded to in the title of the Sidney Lumet film Dog Day Afternoon, starring Al Pacino. “Dog days” has also found new meaning among stock traders who’ve found August slow for stocks as well as people.

9. Tail wagging the dog A situation in which a minor item comes to dominate the major, or in which attention is fixed on incidental problems to the detriment of more central ones. If the intention is to divert attention from important matters to unimportant ones, the method is to “wag the dog.” In the 1997 Barry Levinson film of that name, the electorate is distracted from a White House sex scandal by creating a fictive war. S.J. Perelman once wrote humorously of his escape from the attention of some prostitutes: “It was a case of the tail dogging the wag.”

10. Underdog (n) The person, group, or entity expected to lose a competition or a political race. Election night, 1948, Truman was so much the underdog that the Chicago Tribune confidently headlined Dewey as victor even before the results were in.

11. Love me, love my dog A metaphoric way of saying that a person must be accepted along with those people and things close to or attached to her; by extension, to be accepted with one’s foibles and weaknesses. Back in the 12th century, St. Bernard (appropriately enough) is claimed to have quoted the proverb in Latin: “Qui me amat, amet et canem meum” (literally, “Who loves me, loves my dog, as well”), although why he did that is unclear. “Sally’s friends were disgusted with Herb’s drunkenness and discouraged Sally from bringing him around, until she called them on it and declared, ‘Love me, love my dog.’”

12. Three-dog night (n) A cold night—i.e., one requiring three dogs to keep you warm. Also the American rock group that sang of their friend Jeremiah the bullfrog and wished joy to the world.

13. Lucky dog (n) A very fortunate person, sometimes used to imply undeservedly so. “Herb, that lucky dog, won the lottery the same week his company Amalgamated. •

About the Author:
Donald Friedman is the author of the award-winning novel "The Hand Before the Eye" and the internationally praised and translated "The Writer's Brush: Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture by Writers." http://www.donaldfriedman.com.

About the Artist:
J.C. Suarès has designed, written, and illustrated more than one hundred books, including "The Hollywood Dictionary," "Art of the Times," "Manhattan," "Dogs in Love," "Black and White Dogs," "Hollywood Dogs," "Fat Cats," "Cool Mutts," "Funny Dogs," and "Funny Babies." His illustrations have appeared in The New Yorker, Time, and Variety. http://www.jcsuares.com.

About the Publisher:
Welcome Books® is a publisher of distinctive, exquisitely crafted visual books on a variety of subjects including art, photography, fashion, nature, travel, history, design, religion, sports, parenting, and food.